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You might get some mileage out of FoolEd By Randomness, by N. Taleb. What brings it to mind here is there’s a thought experiment that considers a very large nu
by electric_mayhem 4y ago
You might get some mileage out of FoolEd By Randomness, by N. Taleb.
What brings it to mind here is there’s a thought experiment that considers a very large number of people playing a series of rounds of Russian roulette. At the end there are a handful of very lucky and very wealthy people (and a vast graveyard of th unlucky).
- justrealist 4y agoTaleb writes entertaining books, but fundamentally is a trader who made one good bet (against the housing bubble) and is going to milk it for the rest of his life (which is, amusingly, exactly what he accuses Elon of doing).
- crabkin 4y agoErm showing a a bit bad faith here. Taleb got his big break in the 80s. I think it was Black Monday, when he held long and deeply out of the money puts and watched them bring him considerable return while other market actors went out of business. Maybe the commenter above you is kind of retrofitting Taleb's ideas, but fundamentally Taleb is a real thinker, and Elon is a real people manager/entrepreneur. I don't understand why we think successful business people somehow have the same acumen, or equivalent inclinations as a philosopher or an artist. For sure there is some overlap, but at the end of the day I think it's more probable Elon's intelligence and aptitude are overrated by just about everyone while his people managing skills and luck are underrated by just about everyone.
- jacquesm 4y agoThe irony is very amusing on this.